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du·gong (dgŏng′, -gông′)
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n.
A herbivorous marine mammal (Dugong dugon), native to tropical coastal waters of the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and southwest Pacific Ocean and having flipperlike forelimbs and a notched tail.
[New Latin Dugong, genus name, ultimately (partly via French dugon) from dugung, recorded as a local word for the dugong on the Moluccan island of Leti by Ernst Christoph Barchewitz (1687-1758), German travel writer and administrator for the Dutch East Indies Company, perhaps a misreading (with g for y) of *duyung, representing a local pronunciation of standard Malay duyong; akin to Tagalog duyong, dugong, and Malagasy trozona, whale, all from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *duyuŋ, dugong.]
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dugong
Dugong dugon
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

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